Gritting teams will be out in Nottinghamshire as temperatures drop

Notts county council gritter

Published:17:10Thursday 13 December 2018

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Nottinghamshire County Council’s gritting teams will be out again tonight (Thursday, December 13) for the fifth evening in a row as road temperatures are set to stay around zero overnight until after the weekend.

All the main gritting roads (A and B roads and bus routes) have been gritted overnight since Sunday and the county’s gritting teams are also likely to be out in the evenings Friday to Sunday, according to the five-day forecast.

Weather data is monitored from Via East Midlands’ Newark depot – Via is managing highways services on behalf of Nottinghamshire County Council as they work in partnership on the ongoing annual winter planning preparations. The teams will continue to monitor the situation closely.

Coun John Cottee, the council’s communities and place committee chairman, said: “This week has been the first of the season where our gritting teams have been out every night since they went on winter standby at the start of October because of the recent spate of unseasonably mild weather.

“We also expect to be out tomorrow - when road temperatures are likely to fall below zero on Friday night with the chance of some light rain and even a few snow flurries - and weekend evenings before temperatures are forecast to creep up a notch next week with just a chance of the odd colder night.”

The council teams gritted the county’s main routes just five times during both October and November, but have already done a handful of runs since the start of this month.

After a slow start this season, gritting teams had already been out nearly twice as many times at this point last season compared to the same time this year (26 runs by December 12, 2017 compared with 15 by the same point this season).

Every time the lorries go out, an area the size of 100 large football pitches gets gritted. Each gritting run can take more than three hours - so what this means is that residents’ roads may be gritted sometime after the circuit starts.

Kevin Heathcote, gritting team manager said: “We stockpile 20,000 tonnes of salt at the start of the winter – well above Government recommendations - and salt is distributed from four depots across the county-based at Markham Moor, Bilsthorpe, Newark and Gamston, so currently our stocks are looking very healthy.”

As well as salting roads, the gritting teams have also been making sure the 1,400 roadside grit bins across the county are full.

These are for use by local communities on pavements and roads, but not private driveways.

If needed, be prepared and plan your route with the help of the online maps which show which roads which are gritted at www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/gritting

For winter weather alerts and information, follow @NottsCC on Twitter.